New Products

Posted on March 01, 2007

Clustered storage: Isilon targets SMBs

Isilon is trying to make clustered storage more affordable for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with the introduction of the IQ 200. Priced at just under $40,000, the new model includes Isilon’s OneFS 4.5 operating system software.

Citing Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) figures, Isilon reports that in 2006, 58% of all new data was unstructured data, and that data is growing at a rate of 92% per year.

“Unstructured files require sustained throughput rather than IOPS [I/Os per second], which traditional systems were designed for,” claims Brett Goodwin, vice president of marketing and business development at Isilon. “The IQ 200 has Intel Xeon processors and 4.5GB of memory [for high performance].”

Goodwin says that with more disks to store large amounts of data, the probability of having multiple hardware failures increases: “Clustered storage protects against the simultaneous failure of three or four disks, without data loss. This goes beyond RAID 6 in traditional systems.”

Each IQ 200 provides 2TB of capacity in a 1U form factor. Users can start out with three or more nodes, and as they reach 90% capacity utilization they can purchase more nodes-up to 24 nodes in a single cluster, scaling from 6TB to 48TB. Unlike Isilon’s other IQ models, which have InfiniBand connections on the back-end, the IQ 200 uses Gigabit Ethernet to connect to existing data-center hardware and between nodes.

“Additional nodes automatically join the others in 60 seconds and the system re-balances all of the data across the nodes,” says Goodwin. “By striping data across the nodes, we create a symmetric clustered-storage system with linear scalability in performance and capacity, which is different from traditional NAS or SAN storage systems.”

Three optional software products are available: SnapShotIQ, SmartConnect, and SyncIQ.

SnapShotIQ creates an unlimited number of point-in-time snapshots of the file system. The snapshots can be taken on directories, sub-directories, or sets of files, without requiring snapshots of entire volumes.

SmartConnect creates load-balancing policies related to CPU utilization or throughput and also provides fail-over. The software can create zones in the cluster, allowing different quality-of-service levels.

SyncIQ replicates data to other IQ systems over an IP network (LAN or WAN). Replication can be one-to-one or one-to-many.

SnapShotIQ is priced at $1,450 per node. SmartConnect and SyncIQ are each priced at $2,950 per node.

Siafu encrypts IP storage

Siafu Software has added hardware-based data encryption on all of its Swarm series IP storage arrays. The appliances include AES 256-bit encryption, automatic and integrated tape backup, disk-to-disk snapshots, high-availability features, support for RAID 51/61, and active-active fail-over, and capacities ranging from 1TB to 7.5TB. With encryption, pricing starts at $8,995. Siafu also sells Sypher tape encryption appliances, which are priced from $6,995.

NAS: Adaptec aims for the enterprise

Adaptec recently added the Snap Server 650 to its line of NAS appliances. The 650 doubles the performance of the company’s existing NAS devices and scales from 1.2TB to 64.2TB.

Adaptec optimized the Snap Server 650 for applications such as video surveillance, e-mail database archiving, disk-based backup, and long-distance disaster recovery. The optimization stems from two dual-core, 64-bit AMD Opteron processors, resulting in four logical processors in the system and data throughput speeds to 1,045Mbps.

Other product enhancements from Adaptec include the introduction of 750GB Serial ATA (SATA) drives to the Snap Server 520 and SANbloc S50 expansion modules, along with heterogeneous server support. The S50 has been qualified with Adaptec’s 4800 family of controllers.

The Snap Server 650 is based on the GuardianOS operating system and offers data-protection software that include antivirus, backup and recovery, and data replication.

MonoSphere includes auto-collection

MonoSphere’s Storage Horizon 3.0 expands the capacity-planning software to include auto-collection of data from storage arrays. The software then correlates the connection between storage supply and demand. It also generates a capacity plan, including costs. These features are designed to help users reduce capital expenditures on data storage.

Storage Horizon 3.0 also has automatic mapping of application host volumes with logical devices. Daily monitoring and forecasting includes alerts for potential hot spots and over-provisioned areas. The agent-less software runs on Windows and can collect data from Linux and Unix platforms. Pricing starts at $50,000.

DataCore upgrades virtualization

DataCore Software has begun shipments of its SANsymphony Enterprise Edition 6.0 virtualization software. Features include

New SAN domains that provide virtual SANs within the physical SAN;

”Span the SAN” services that allow operations and policies to be applied against groups of resources;

N+1 grid services that go beyond clustered or dual-controller systems for business continuity and data protection;

SANsymphony can run in tandem with virtual server environments such as VMware.

Teneros extends e-mail protection

The Teneros Application Continuity Appliance extends e-mail continuity on the LAN to remote disaster recovery on the WAN. The appliance located in a remote location provides e-mail operation and access during an outage of the primary e-mail server. When the primary server is restored, the e-mails from the remote appliance are restored to the primary server. The Application Continuity Appliance for disaster recovery of Microsoft Exchange is priced from $20,000 to $30,000 and is available in models supporting up to 1,000 mailboxes.

The company claims performance of up to 20x the performance of standard 15,000rpm disk drives (or approximately the same as traditional solid-state disk, or SSD, drives), and a capacity that is 15x that of most SSD drives.

DNF officials also claim that HSS drives use 16% less power than 146GB SAS drives and 24% less power than 15,000rpm Fibre Channel disk drives. Power consumption is rated at 12.5 watts, which is less than what 500GB, 7,200rpm drives consume.

DNF’s HSS drives also include battery-backed cache to eliminate data loss in the event of a power loss. The 120GB version of the HSS drive is priced at $2,500.

Separately, DNF introduced the Enterprise F12-HA RAID array, which supports 4Gbps Fibre Channel host connections and both SATA and SAS disk drives, as well as dual controllers. The company quotes pricing of $3.50 per gigabyte, or $15,000 for a SATA-based configuration. Supporting 12 SAS/SATA drives, the systems can be configured with up 45TB of capacity using DNF’s Spod 12000 expansion arrays, which have InfiniBand connections to the array.

Revinetix enhances D2D2D software

In the 2.0 release of its RevOS software, which works with the company’s Sentio and Volo lines of disk-based backup appliances, Revinetix has added a number of new features, including a Microsoft Exchange Server Agent, support for NAS, enhanced bare-metal restore functionality, and support for virtually all operating systems.

Pricing for the Exchange agent starts at $500 for 50 mailboxes, or $1,995 for an unlimited number of users. The company’s appliances range from 400GB to 18TB, with prices ranging from $2,995 to $59,995.

Olixir: Low-cost compression and encryption

Olixir Technologies has added the SC-1000 Hardware Accelerated Compression and Encryption option to its line of FastRestore SE and Enterprise disk-based backup appliances. The company claims compression ratios of 2:1 to 4:1 for most database and e-mail applications, and a 50% speed advantage over software-based encryption approaches that can tie up host resources.

The SC-1000 is a hardware card that plugs into PCI-X slots, providing simultaneous encryption and compression. On the encryption side, the card uses 128- and 256-bit key sizes, and the AES algorithm in ECB mode with a 128-bit block size and variable key sizes that are changeable on a per-block basis. On the compression side, the company claims throughput speeds up to 75MBps.

The SC-1000, which is priced at $995, is available in two versions-one for Symantec’s Backup Exec and another for EMC’s Insignia backup-and-restore software.

Calendar

April 14-19NAB2007-Las Vegas, NV

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference features more than 500 sessions within multiple conference tracks targeting every area of electronic media-all supporting the technologies and applications found on the exhibit floor. More than 90,000 attendees are expected. For more information, check out www.nabshow.com.

April 16-19Storage Networking World-San Diego, CA

Produced by Computerworld and co-owned by Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the conference focuses on the rapid growth of user implementation of storage networking technologies. Attendees learn about successes and challenges, products, tools, services, and training within the storage networking industry. More than 130 sponsors/exhibitors are expected. For more, go to www.storagenetworkingworld.com.

April 22-26CA World 2007-Las Vegas, NV

Sponsored by CA, the event features key strategies and product demonstrations, as well as training sessions and workshops. The conference focuses on CA’s management software solutions and broader industry and technology trends. For more information, go to http://ca.com/caworld.

Please enable Javascript in your browser, before you post the comment! Now Javascript is disabled.